Dosvidaniya, Ivan Ivanovitch,
Living life like it couldn't last.
Each day you feel the marrrow diminish
And each week ending is a week too fast
From which there is no turning back.
So you cinch it up tight and leave no slack
To slip through those towering gates,
Relieved from duty in these United States,
Where you were born but never fit.
Now the powers that be coil and spit
As the venomed fangs are bared.
You want to abandon ship, but never dared
And paced and tried to raise the nerve,
Knowing or praying, hoping for the call
Before stumbling into that last blind curve.
It never came and now you sit and wait,
And swear this time you'll play it straight,
Hovering in circles until you stall.
---o0o---
Saturday, June 18, 2005
The Johnson Treatment, Part 6
Click photo to enlarge
Here you see LBJ working over The Hump and LBJ's early Senate mentor, Se. Richard Russell. All This Is That has published numerous photos and paintings of LBJ. Check out:
One of the heroes and villains paintings
LBJ In A Characteristic Pose
Running Mates: Senators Lyndon Johnson And JFK
The Johnson Treatment, Part 5: Senator Richard Russell (Dem., Georgia) Undergoes The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment, Part 4: President Johnson Gives The Treatment To Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas
The Johnson Treatment, Part 3: LBJ Gives Eartha Kitt The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment
The Johnson Treatment
Friday, June 17, 2005
Dylan Thomas's Prologue
Dylan Thomas wrote this as the prologue to his Collected Poems, not long before his death. He posed himself an interesting technical challenge: the first line rhymes with the last, the second with the next to last, and so on, converging on the couplet in the middle (lines 50 and 51) separating the stanzas. Great poem, great rhyme scheme...although Thomas was disappointed that no one could pick out the rhymes when he read the poem aloud. It is one of the four or five poems I know by heart.
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill!
Look: I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods!
The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks!
Across The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
---o0o---
This day winding down now
At God speeded summer's end
In the torrent salmon sun,
In my seashaken house
On a breakneck of rocks
Tangled with chirrup and fruit,
Froth, flute, fin, and quill
At a wood's dancing hoof,
By scummed, starfish sands
With their fishwife cross
Gulls, pipers, cockles, and snails,
Out there, crow black, men
Tackled with clouds, who kneel
To the sunset nets,
Geese nearly in heaven, boys
Stabbing, and herons, and shells
That speak seven seas,
Eternal waters away
From the cities of nine
Days' night whose towers will catch
In the religious wind
Like stalks of tall, dry straw,
At poor peace I sing
To you strangers (though song
Is a burning and crested act,
The fire of birds in
The world's turning wood,
For my sawn, splay sounds),
Out of these seathumbed leaves
That will fly and fall
Like leaves of trees and as soon
Crumble and undie
Into the dogdayed night.
Seaward the salmon, sucked sun slips,
And the dumb swans drub blue
My dabbed bay's dusk, as I hack
This rumpus of shapes
For you to know
How I, a spinning man,
Glory also this star, bird
Roared, sea born, man torn, blood blest.
Hark: I trumpet the place,
From fish to jumping hill!
Look: I build my bellowing ark
To the best of my love
As the flood begins,
Out of the fountainhead
Of fear, rage red, manalive,
Molten and mountainous to stream
Over the wound asleep
Sheep white hollow farms
To Wales in my arms.
Hoo, there, in castle keep,
You king singsong owls, who moonbeam
The flickering runs and dive
The dingle furred deer dead!
Huloo, on plumbed bryns,
O my ruffled ring dove
In the hooting, nearly dark
With Welsh and reverent rook,
Coo rooing the woods' praise,
Who moons her blue notes from her nest
Down to the curlew herd!
Ho, hullaballoing clan Agape, with woe
In your beaks, on the gabbing capes!
Heigh, on horseback hill, jack
Whisking hare! who
Hears, there, this fox light, my flood ship's
Clangour as I hew and smite
(A clash of anvils for my
Hubbub and fiddle, this tune
On a tongued puffball)
But animals thick as thieves
On God's rough tumbling grounds
(Hail to His beasthood).
Beasts who sleep good and thin,
Hist, in hogsback woods!
The haystacked
Hollow farms in a throng
Of waters cluck and cling,
And barnroofs cockcrow war!
O kingdom of neighbors, finned
Felled and quilled, flash to my patch
Work art and the moonshine
Drinking Noah of the bay,
With pelt, and scale, and fleece:
Only the drowned deep bells
Of sheep and churches noise
Poor peace as the sun sets
And dark shoals every holy field.
We will ride out alone and then,
Under the stars of Wales,
Cry, Multitudes of arks!
Across The water lidded lands,
Manned with their loves they'll move,
Like wooden islands, hill to hill.
Huloo, my proud dove with a flute!
Ahoy, old, sea-legged fox,
Tom tit and Dai mouse!
My ark sings in the sun
At God speeded summer's end
And the flood flowers now.
---o0o---
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Senator Clinton wins S.C. straw poll
Richland County Democrats held the nation’s first straw poll for the 2008 presidential race Wednesday and the surprise winner was U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York.
“We’re simply delighted,” said Bob Kunst, president of Hillarynow.com, who is traveling the country promoting Clinton’s candidacy.
“This should help us in our effort. It gives us a nice boost.”
Clinton’s victory at the sparesely attended event was a mild upset. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a native South Carolinian and last year’s Democratic vice presidential candidate, had been considered the favorite.
Click the title to see the full article...
---o0o---
“We’re simply delighted,” said Bob Kunst, president of Hillarynow.com, who is traveling the country promoting Clinton’s candidacy.
“This should help us in our effort. It gives us a nice boost.”
Clinton’s victory at the sparesely attended event was a mild upset. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a native South Carolinian and last year’s Democratic vice presidential candidate, had been considered the favorite.
Click the title to see the full article...
---o0o---
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
All This Is That Traffic Notes
click chart to enlarge
This chart shows the tally of today's visitors to this blog, broken out by country and domains. You can't tell what country the domains or the "IP address only" country, so you'd have to guess probably the U.S. Interesting. . .
---o0o---
Deep Throat Led Probes To Find ... Deep Throat
AP file
Updated: 7:16 p.m. ET June 14, 2005
NEW YORK - Mark Felt, the former FBI official who unmasked himself as the legendary "Deep Throat" source who leaked Watergate secrets, twice led FBI probes into finding Deep Throat, The Nation magazine said Tuesday. Click on the title to link to the full story on MSNBC.COM.
Updated: 7:16 p.m. ET June 14, 2005
NEW YORK - Mark Felt, the former FBI official who unmasked himself as the legendary "Deep Throat" source who leaked Watergate secrets, twice led FBI probes into finding Deep Throat, The Nation magazine said Tuesday. Click on the title to link to the full story on MSNBC.COM.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Happy Flag Day!
click image to enlarge
A great flag scene from one of my favorite movies.
No one celebrates Flag Day much anymore. When I was a kid, I remember flags every five feet, up and down each side of Meeker Street. The D.A.V. and Civitan Clubs sold flags and lapel flags on the street corner.
About half the country seems to be have magnetic bunting and pro-war ribbons attached to their cars. There were flags everywhere following September 11, 2001, but the actual fervor has visibly dimiished. You'd think every street in America would be awash in flags with the resurgence in jingoism following 9/11.
At the risk of being a reprobate to the Democratic/leftist flange, I think flag waving is OK.
At the risk of being anathema to the Republican/hard rightists, I think flag burning is OK too. It usually seems kind of silly, but it does get attention with its shock factor.
---o0o---
Monday, June 13, 2005
Federal Election Commission Blog Crackdown
The proposed new FEC regulations on blogs seek to apply federal campaign finance rules to online publications.
This could affect any blog with content about U.S. politics (which includes this blog). Among the Federal Elections Commission proposals:
Click on the title of this posting to read the proposed FEC rules.
---o0o---
This could affect any blog with content about U.S. politics (which includes this blog). Among the Federal Elections Commission proposals:
Mandatory disclaimers on political blogs
Team blogs must register as a "political committee"
Bloggers to file campaign expenditure reports
Click on the title of this posting to read the proposed FEC rules.
---o0o---
Christina Aguilera Used To Torture Prisoners At Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp
TIME OBTAINS SECRET INTERROGATION LOG FROM GUANTANAMO; INCLUDES MOMENT-BY-MOMENT ACCOUNT OF INTERROGATION OF DETAINEE WHO U.S. BELIEVES WAS THE ‘20TH HIJACKER’
The interrogation sessions lengthen. The quizzing now starts at midnight, and when Detainee 063 dozes off, interrogators rouse him by dripping water on his head or playing Christina Aguilera music. According to the log, his handlers at one point perform a puppet show “satirizing the detainee’s involvement with al-Qaeda.” He is taken to a new interrogation booth, which is decorated with pictures of 9/11 victims, American flags and red lights. He has to stand for the playing of the U.S. national anthem. His head and beard are shaved. He is returned to his original interrogation booth. A picture of a 9/11 victim is taped to his trousers. Al-Qahtani repeats that he will “not talk until he is interrogated the proper way.” At 7 a.m. on Dec. 4, after a 12-hour, all-night session, he is put to bed for a four-hour nap, TIME reports.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)